Photography Biography

Julien J Dumont Jr: Photographer

It’s actually hard for me to put a photography biography because I never intended on becoming one. My interest in photography began when my son was born in 1997. As a parent, I wanted to capture every possible milestone and event in his life. The goal was to be able to preserve a history for him to look back on as he became older and could appreciate and enjoy the photos of his life.

In 1997 I was using a camera that actually required film… yes film… remember using that? You can imagine how many photo albums were generated and stored back in those days. (You can also imagine how many really bad “double printed” photos I ended up with as well.) In an effort to find a better method of taking photographs and storing them, I invested in a Sony Mavica digital camera in June 2001. This camera used mini cd-r discs that held only about 180mb of data. To put that in perspective, that’s about 3 photos with a professional grade camera today. But, back in those days, you could fit over 200 photos on one of those discs. As time went on and my desire to get better quality photos grew, I broke down and went into the Nikon family in 2009.

Since 2009, I have purchased the Nikon D60 (August 2009), D90 (June 2010) and D7000 (May 2012). Each of these cameras has been an upgrade in both quality and expense with every purchase.

The Nikon D60 era: I bought a Nikon D60 sometime in August of 2009. I bought this camera on the advice of a couple of friends, who were also hobby photographers, and I was fortunate to have their guidance with how to use settings in Manual mode and other advanced camera features. I was so hooked on learning the camera that I often read about digital photography, camera modes, features, how to use them, etc. Without boring you more than I already have, let’s just say, lots of tweaking and experimenting early on. The D60 was pretty good with daylight photography, but I quickly learned it did not have much capability to do “dark” or night photography without being grainy. I still managed to use this camera as a good family event camera, for my early nature , foliage and scenic photos. With my desire to do low light photography, I realized this camera was not going to be able to handle what I was looking for, so I moved on to a camera that was more capable for that type of photography.

The Nikon D90 era: This was the camera that I started photographing bands with. I was excited to get a little more “umph” out of this camera, but I quickly learned its limitations in low light and with the lenses I have. I still managed to get a lot of “band/nightclub” photography out of his unit, and it is the camera that “put me on the map” with the recognition of my work with bands.

The D7000 era: Unfortunately, I did not have the $4,000+ for the camera that I wanted, nor the $2,300+ for the lens that would have helped my band photography with an upgrade from the D90, but this camera is, again, a step in the right direction and is the one I currently use as of the writing of this bio on March of 2015.

From then to now: I have essentially carried my camera bag everywhere I have gone since I purchased the D60. Summer, Winter, sun, snow, rain.... it doesn't matter... I have taken photographs of anything and everything that I have found interesting. If you are reading this, chances are you have been a recepient of some of my photos. Because of the generous and positive feedback and comments about my work, I have finally put together this long overdue website and I am looking forward to continue to add more photos for people to enjoy.

~ Julien ~
March 2015